Restarting Life
by SomebodyAwesome
Summary: After days of searching, Chell finally finds refuge in BLU headquarters.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

She ran. She always ran from her problems, because she didn't know any other way of resolving her issues. Aperture screwed her mind up, made her think she was fat, and that her parents hated her existence. Almost like she was an accident. Chell was happy to be alive, but her sudden alone time gave her some time to think, about her life, about the fact that she was at one point a talkative hyperactive lunatic who was filled with more self-confidence than the world could ever previously provide her just by living. As soon as she was placed in Aperture for testing, her opinions seemed unwanted. Nothing about her seemed good enough for GLaDOS, for Wheatley, and for Aperture. So why wouldn't they let her go sooner? Right. Because she was a good portal gun tester.

She noticed a building, with signs that said Blu all over it. She was very smart, but she doesn't express it verbally, she expresses it by completing the tests set in front of her. Or at least she did.

_Are the people here morons, _she thought to herself._ Or is Blu a name of some sort?_ _I might as well investigate the building_. Worst case scenario was that they would treat her like Aperture did. Best case scenario was either she was alone, and the place was abandoned, or the people there would help her find her way.

She proceeded to enter the building, and she immediately heard laughter. This place was in the middle of nowhere, so it was either here, or dying in a desert where nobody would ever find the body.

_There are no feminine voices, so all these people must be men. _She continued to think to herself. She was a thinker, no doubt about it. She looked into a window, and there were eight men there, a campfire, and a blue briefcase. She felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Hi there!" A teenage boy, no older than twenty, said in a chipper voice, with a Boston accent to top it all off. Chell almost screamed and ran, but she didn't want to seem like the lunatic she thought she was, so she just half-heartedly waved. Her entire body turned bright red. He was holding a baseball bat.

_Oh no, not the body blush…_ everybody she knew made fun of her for the dreaded body blush. Basically not just her face would turn red when she was embarrassed- all of her would turn red, like she suddenly got a giant sunburn.

"Can't you talk? I'm the Scout of this whole operation. We don't see women here often." He grabbed poor Chell's arm and insisted in introducing her to everyone else.

"Hey guys, look who I found! A woman! Can you believe it?" He was so proud of himself.

"H… h… hello?" She whispered. She thought every fear she had was pounded out of her by the more powerful fear of dying she had in Aperture. Boy, was she wrong.

"She doesn't really talk much…" the Scout continued.

"Well, we are men, and you are in a building!" A man who looked like he was in the army exclaimed, like she was an uneducated imbecile.

"I am not a moron!" Chell barked. She heard that a lot.

"She speaks fluent English when she is defensive!" A French man in a mask inquired. She felt like she was in a testing facility again, and she didn't like it. She held her hand up to slap him, but the Scout grabbed her wrist before she could do so.

"I wouldn't try that if I were you. He's the Spy. He can cloak himself so he's invisible, and he's got a butterfly knife, and a gun!" She tried to fight her hand free from the giant hand the Scout possessed, but she was unable. She was tired, hungry, and she never needed strength to complete the tests, and he was strong. Did he technically save her? His grip released, and her hand was free. She fell to the floor when he let her go.

"Oh, and this is Sniper, Engineer, Soldier," Chell gave the Soldier a dirty look-he was the one that made her look like she was stupid. "Pyro, Demoman, Medic, and Heavy," he continued. They all seemed insane in some way. This thought reassured Chell, for she thought she was insane.

"Do you have a name?" The Sniper asked

"And what's up with the orange jumpsuit?"

"What the heck is Aperture?"

Chell was being flooded with questions, and she didn't really know how to answer them.

"Uum, my name is Chell." She thought she was up to a great start, her confidence in talking was rapidly growing.

"I am wearing an orange jumpsuit because it was a uniform- I tested the Quantum tunneling device, more commonly known as a portal gun, at Aperture Science Innovators, an enrichment center. They didn't want me to talk, so I didn't… and I have basically been silent ever since I was ten years of age. That's why I don't talk often."

_Did I really just put all those words together in sentences? Maybe I just need that confidence back…_

Everyone looked at her in astonishment. Did the mute girl really just answer all their questions without hesitating?

"You want sandwich?" The Heavy asked in his thick Russian accent- he apparently wasn't good at placing sentences together.

"You are pretty thin… you also look dehydrated, here, have some cola," the Scout offered.

_Thin? These people think I am thin? And… they are giving me their food? _Chell felt safe, likable, and for the first time… happy.


	2. Chapter 2

Chell couldn't help but toss and turn in her cot, lying awake with the bright moonlight shining through her window directly into her eyes. _No curtains. God damn…_ She thought. She was grateful of what she _had _received: people she might at some point see as friends, a room all to herself that didn't include a bed with a plastic lid, and all in a building that didn't have an AI that continuously tried to kill her. It was just the fact that she was avoiding the inevitable reason why she couldn't sleep. Her body clock was all wrong, which drove her nuts. She was used to never sleeping, except for the massive comas she would get forced into. She was also never used to knowing what time of day it was- Aperture had no windows to the outside world-it was almost like the Ministry of Love. She couldn't take it anymore. She stood up and slowly crept out of her room to see if Medic had any sort of sleeping medication.

She had been told to see Medic "downstairs" for whenever she needed something, for he never slept, and he provided for the same functions everyone else's items had: low on health? Medic didn't have food or beverage that would provide invincibility or increased health, but he did have his kritzkrieg and ubercharge, which is essentially the same thing. She passed by Demoman, who didn't quite make it to his room before he passed out from his excessive drinking. That was when she sensed… a disturbance.

Paranoia was something she scorned in herself ever since she left Aperture, but that never kept that terrible feeling away. Her heart started to thump into her throat, her already cold sweats worsening as she continued along. She couldn't help but look EVERYWHERE in the hallway she was in, including on top of the vents, for some reason. About every few feet she would look behind her, just to see the same scenery: a pissed Demoman and a dark hallway. She was looking back when she turned the corner, and a figure randomly popped out of nowhere in front of her.

"Chell!" A feminine voice chirped as arms wrapped around Chell in a tight, warm hug. The girl's foot lifted up to her thigh as she maintained the peppy hug she forced Chell into. When she finally released, she noticed Chell's quiet fear and shock, her face bright red and her eyes wide.

"Oops, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. I'm the Pyro. Nobody else but Medic knows I'm a girl, so if you could keep that a secret that would be AWESOME! The last thing I want would be for Scout to hit on me like he does with Miss Pauling- EW!" Her eyes were bright green and her hair a deep brown, almost black and up in a pony tail. Her skin was also very pale behind her lips bright red and full. She looked as if she was in her mid-twenties, but her demeanor was that of a teenager- energetic and youthful. She even clutched a tubby stuffed pink unicorn in her hand as if it would be stolen or slaughtered if left unattended.

"What did you… how did you…?" Chell spat out, trying to form a question but only being able to create parts of many.

"Oh, I steal Spy's watch most nights so I can become invisible and keep my feminine secret from the other guys, if they wake up. This doesn't normally happen because BOY can those guys chug alcohol then pass out. And by out I mean OUT!" She put emphasis on the end of her sentence by raising her voice an octave higher. "I know I can trust you with my secret, though."

"Wha… why?"

"Because, silly, you can barely even speak in complete sentences! That, and we were both in Aperture… God don't you just LOVE that place? I was so sad to leave!" Although Chell noticed the insult laced in that statement, she focused more on the fact that not only did Pyro spend time in Aperture- she actually _liked _it there. "Yup, I was a personality core on GLaDOS! I helped provide that sense of euphoria when a test was completed. But then things went wrong when I started providing euphoria when a test subject _died _instead, so they put me in a cryogenically stored body, and used me as a test subject for a little while because they knew I was a lunatic who didn't fear, but more welcomed death! Since I started setting things on fire spontaneously somehow instead of doing tests, they sent me here with my Pyro suit to replace the last one who quit, and I've been here ever since. I still have my jumpsuit and I snuck out with the portal gun. Isn't that just the greatest? Killing people with fire is like, my dream job, and I actually get paid to do it!" Things started to make sense to Chell- this chick was a psychopath, no doubt about it- and only a psychopath would like Aperture.

"Ooh, did you meet Wheatley? He and I always had "feelings"- or, the AI equivalent. We didn't actually date, it was just more of a… a… a thingy! Yeah, not dating, just thinging. Mainly because we were both AIs attached to a bigger, more powerful AI, but also because our flirting was fun enough- we didn't have to actually commit to anything. Blech, commitment. Also, he was created to be a moron- he didn't even know that! Even an AI without emotions has standards. Boy, but we sure pissed GLaDOS off…" It took about five more minutes of Pyro's incessant talking for Chell realize and absorb something.

"You have their portal gun?!" Chell blurted out, completely interrupting the young girl's sentence.

"Uh huh!" Was surprisingly the Pyro's only reply, because she managed to do an hour's worth of talking in about twenty minutes. "You can have it… Anyway, what are you doing up? Can't sleep?"

"Oh... um… sleeping pills?"

"Oh! You need Medic, I'll take you to him!" And at that, Pyro locked her elbow around Chell's and started skipping down the stairs, slowing down to maintain the speed of Chell's fatigue-fueled stagger. When they reached the door Chell assumed lead to Medic's laboratory, Pyro knocked incredibly loudly and repeatedly in an obnoxious manner.

"Medic! Open the door!" She sang in an opera-esque voice. Chell was starting to get a headache. _Great, more medication, _she thought. She glared at the clock, which stared back at her saying 12:30. It was still early in the night, but she had been trying to get some shut-eye since 8. The door finally swung open, a man with a disappointed face behind it.

"I don't know why I am not used to this by now, Caroline." Chell perked up at that name. She definitely wasn't the same person, but that did not change the strange coincidence of her bearing the same name of the human by which GLaDOS was created. "You do this every night!" Chell just noticed the blood on Medic's hands, and queasiness started to settle in. Maybe he wasn't the right person for sleeping pills. Pain medication, maybe, but _he_ seemed like the kind of person who would put people to sleep in other ways…


End file.
